Archive for the ‘politricks’ Category

Ultimately, in the argument about work and how it should be done, one has only one's pleasures to offer. It is possible … to be in one's place, in such company, wild or domestic, and with such pleasure, that one cannot think of another place that one would prefer to bea€" or of another place at all. One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simply all, and is enough. Such times give one the chief standard and the chief reason for one's work. -AWendell Berry, "Economy and Pleasure" (Continue reading the article by clicking the link below)

"As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes." - Denis Diderot

MNP will be celebrating this September! (help Preemptive Karma by spreading the word about this day!)

The goal of National Civil Discourse Day is for everyone in all forms of media, from Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on the Left to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the Right on down to the most anonymous members of the politicosphere, to commit to a day of respectful and substantive discourse.

Hopefully, the NCDD will raise awareness and show people that America will be better and stronger if we can have respectful debate about our differences in ways that foster consensus (even if that means just agreeing to disagree) and produce beneficial solutions.

There are well defined legal, social, and religious traditions that come into play when our physical lives end that help decide how people remember us, and what happens to our property. Yet we also have digital lives, and their fates are much less understood and controlled. Facebook pages, Google, Twitter - all of these services exist in a legal murky ground after you die as most of these companies maintain rights to any public information you share through their sites. That can prove hectic to loved ones trying to tie up loose ends after someone has passed, but it also highlights a curious condition of the modern age: we may continue to live long after we die thanks to our online records. Are we creating a digital afterlife?

Some call them eco-systems, networks, or communities, but this guy calls them governments. Read along here.

As I thought about it, it became clear that web platforms really don’t make much. Instead, they create the conditions that encourage others to invest their time and energy to create useful services…in the end, the big networks on the web will all have to find a balance between state power and private initiative.

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland), it is now illegal to record an on-duty police officer even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

One charity has to decide whether or not to get rid of a historical chair in their client involvement meetings:

"Well, I mean we do need a new armchair and that's great, but like I said we need to say goodbye to the one we have had for so long. I suggest we put up several memos around the building informing the other clients the final date that the chair will be here. Then I think we should get to burn it and have a few drinks around it and say goodbye."

WikiLeaks front man Julian Paul Assange and his Icelandic transformation- how did his wish to under-serve those who hold "power without accountability" lead to the disintegration of his own orchestrated press club release? This New Yorker article by Raffi Khatchadourian due out next week explores his undoings in and out of the Bunker.

"If it feels a little bit like we're amateurs, it is because we are. Everyone is an amateur in this business."

Businesspeople with good hearts looking to make a difference usually start with three questions: "How can I give back?" "How do I pick a good cause?" and "What skills should I contribute?" But the businesspeople I've met who have made the biggest contribution usually started with a different question: "What can I get?" As a result, they engage more deeply, contribute more of their skills, and do so for longer duration. #cause

--06.10.2012--

It is thus flawed, a weightless, overly romantic attempt at economic analysis, special only in that it is not an entirely boring read. #weightless

--06.10.2012--

Are nature and spirituality compatible, are they aloof colleagues, indifferent and incurious about what the other is saying? #physics

--06.10.2012--

I'm not entirely sure what literary fiction is "supposed" to be...but it is something that we can recognize when we read it, and in terms of speculative stories, it's a suggestion of internal struggle. #weird

Scientists published their work in journals that only scientists read, classicists in volumes that only classicists read, and engineers in blue books that no one read. So the reference book was born---the compendium of facts, the chrestomathy of passages, and the anthology of extracts---by which the rest of us could learn and use the information that print technology was producing, filling bookshelves that could be measured by the mile. #wikipedia